Our Trip to Ecuador – Part 1: Food

Posted on July 11, 2013

Hi, Everyone! Since we just got back from spending a couple of days in Ecuador, I wanted to share a little bit about our trip with you today! This was my first time visiting South America, and it was such a fun adventure! In this first part, I want to tell you about all the different kinds of food we had in Ecuador! I love trying new things whenever I travel, and since food is such a big part of a culture, you can learn a lot from it about the country’s history and its people. The cuisine in Ecuador is pretty diverse, and includes lots of different kinds of meats (including guinea pig, which we did try!), seafood, rice and a huge variety of fruits. Let me tell you a little more about it…

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One of my favorite places that we went to was a trout farm and lodge in the El Cajas National Park called Dos Chorreras (you can find out more about it HERE!) The lodge is in the Andes mountains and the scenery around it is just breathtaking! It was very cold and foggy up in the mountains, and this lodge was so beautiful and cozy, decorated in a traditional style with bright colors and comforting warmth coming from the fireplace!

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The cozy interior of the lodge restaurant. What’s special about this place is that they have their own lakes and you actually see them catch your trout! Then they take it back into the kitchen and prepare it for you depending on how you order it!

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The first course was a traditional Ecuadorian potato soup with egg and avocado. It was deliciously creamy! We discovered that soups are very popular in Ecuador and are usually served to start the meal off. We tried a couple of different versions of this potato soup, some were more creamy, some were more of a broth, served with different toppings.

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To start the meal off, we got this warm, cider-like drink. It was sweet with a hint of cinnamon, and the perfect thing to warm us up on a very cold day!

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We tasted so many different kinds of fresh fruit juices, like pineapple, mango, orange, lime, and papaya, but this mulberry juice was my absolute favorite!

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This was my dinner at the trout farm – trout with shrimp and bacon in a creamy sauce with yucca and vegetables! It was definitely the freshest fish I have ever had, since we saw them catch it just a couple of minutes before it was served to us!

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And the sweetest part of the meal – Flan with raspberry sauce.

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I loved how there was so much fresh fruit sold on the street. There were lots of people like this lady, pushing carts with cut up pieces of pineapple, coconut and other fruit like strawberries and apricots selling them to people passing by. There were also lots of people carrying big baskets selling different little pastries and sweets.

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One of our many stops at the bakery! There were lots of little bakeries on the streets of Cuenca (the town where we were staying) selling different cakes, sweet pastries, and sweet and savory breads. The empanadas stuffed with cheese were my favorite! There was also lots of dark chocolate being sold everywhere. The dark Ecuadorian chocolate was delicious, and it was so cool to see all the cocoa beans growing along the streets on many of our drives through the country!

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I had never seen plantains served like this – with rice and beef! Plantains are like bananas, and are often used in cooking. They are sweet and soft, and we had them served alongside meals like this, with queso fresco (cheese) and saw them sold as chips on the streets.

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A little coffee shop selling bags of Ecuadorian coffee. You could either buy it ground or buy the beans (which we did). This place smelled AMAZING, and was definitely the freshest coffee I have ever seen – they told us the beans had been brought down from the mountains that very morning!

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I hope you enjoyed this little food tour of Ecuador, come back again soon to hear more about our time in Ecuador! Have a great rest of your week, Everyone!

Meet Maria

A girl, a whisk & a pair of scissors!

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